Aloft in hillside’s clearing
a man tethered by creative urges
communal and solitary drifts between working
wheel and elastic flesh
pounding above the valley’s meandering
resting a moment in the afternoon’s enquiring sun
on a sofa watched by a reclining nude between drying racks
glazed nipples and legs apart, her forever wink

Slipped in the molten shadows
a cleft where the moisture of Gaia’s mouth
patters from the corrugated sky
feeds the umbilical scar and scatters
amongst her discarded clothes, the drying prints of his hand

Anchored in patches between the relentless rainforest
the potter-gatherer hews shapes of wood and iron
nets of marine steel silvery shoals of spot welds planted in the hillside
miles from high tide anticipating the winged catch of flying fish
above the river reeds’ spear-bed

In gathering mode she walks carved terraces to the eyrie
past night’s erect lanterns
casting the unfamiliar shadows of sundials
on entering his sanctum
fingers the arc of lighthouse’s wooden beams
encircles the landscape of caldera’s hills
she follows all the women who’ve gone before her
stumbling at the threshold

Without him here her transaction must wait
for today he’s gone fishing in the sky
for lightening’s elemental glaze
harvesting late winter’s morning flower
she places red petals on the birdbath
leaves a pencilled message in a journal of dusty ideas
then departs via the hillside path
into the dappled day, she’ll write again

After visiting various ceramics studios on the ‘North Coast Mud Trail’ as part of the Australian Ceramics Open Studios weekend on 15 & 16 August 2015. The photographs are from the grounds of Suvira McDonald’s studio at Goonengerry in the Byron Bay hinterland not far from Minyon Falls.